Timmy Dooley (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their presentations. As we are coming towards the end of the session, many of the questions have been asked.

I will focus on something a little bit more political and operational rather than scientific. There is no disputing the science, quite frankly. From a political perspective, we must try to find the solutions that allow us, insofar as we can, to manage food production, which is an important feature and cannot be taken in isolation. At the same time, we must manage the expectations of our farmers and our citizens generally in the way they live their lives.

One of the biggest difficulties is that the narrative around the emergence of science or the narrative around publication of scientific reports always focuses on the farmer. That is not good because, quite frankly, one starts to make a scapegoat out of certain individuals and it becomes a “them and us”. Having started in a rural environment, gone urban and came back semi-rural, I am taken that there is always a “them and us”. We need to take that out of the debate. When there is this bickering of who is to blame, it gets very difficult. That is why it is important to stick to the science and the solutions.

It would be good to better understand the extent to which the State is a polluter. We work hard with communities to try to get wastewater treatment systems in place – I am working on two at the moment. Officials in the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications are pushing back against the building of treatment systems because, in their mind, it does not meet with the cost-benefit analysis. On the one hand, farmers are being forced to invest more money and change their practice, and the State, on the other hand, through local authorities, is contributing to nitrates in the water. Department officials are pushing against the treatment systems because they are looking at it in terms of a cost-benefit analysis. There is a significant body of work to be done at central government in the first instance. I am not suggesting it is for the witnesses at all, but I am using this opportunity to make the point that until the State is first up and best dressed when it comes to putting in place mitigation measures to address the run-off from its own facilities and the pollution from its own wastewater treatment plants, it is hard to use the stick with other actors and smaller individuals. Discuss.